Tracy Anderson Torture

I wanted to talk a little bit about the Tracy Anderson Metamorphosis DVDs. I learned about Tracy Anderson when a friend of mine sent me a link to this video. I was fascinated by what she was doing – I’ve never seen anyone move like that, but I didn’t pursue getting any more information about her or her products. Fast-forward a year and through Gwyneth Palrow’s newsletter GOOP, I saw that this same lady had come out with a new series of DVDs and I was very interested.

I purchased them last week and have currently completed the first set of exercises (cardio and isometric) twice. Before I say anything later on that may give you the wrong idea, I want to say that I LOVE these DVDs and will continue to use them as a frequent and maybe even huge part of my movement buffet. Here is a part of her infomercial…

I try very hard in life to be positive and only say nice things about people so I’m going to say that I feel that Tracy is a little wonky. Sweet, but wonky.

If you’re a rule follower, rigid in any way, these are not the exercise videos for you. Tracy does things like four counts of something on one side and three on the other or she’ll do the hand movements one side and not at all on the other. Sometimes she only does something once and then moves on – she definitely dances to the beat of her own drummer and you either deal with it and move on or you go insane…I’ve chosen to embrace the wonky because it’s a hell of a workout.

Also, there are no instructions – so if you’re the type of person who needs someone to verbally to tell you what’s coming up – this is not the system for you. Pretty much she dances and jumps around for a half an hour flailing her arms about and your job is to try to keep up.

I’m also going to say that Tracy is a dancer and probably has been dancing most of her life. She is in amazing shape and SHE sweats during this workout. It’s a hard, hard workout and I can’t do it. The first time I tried it, I jumped around for 5 minutes and then (sucking major wind) I had to take it to a “low impact” version for the next 25. Even that had me sweating buckets (which I don’t do as a rule, so her program seems to have made me turn a corner and I am pleased!!) I tried to do all of the same moves she was doing and I did all of the arm movements (flailing in my case, for sure) and got a heck of a workout.  I haven’t really done aerobics like this since the 80’s..and even then, I wasn’t terribly adept at it…I’m not much of a jumper.

I’m assuming it will be like everything and get easier and easier as I go along. The second time was easier than the first, but I think I took two days off in between. She suggests doing this program every day for six days and resting from it on the seventh. No. Way. In. Hell. I can do that. So that’s another area in which there is a lot of room for improvement. I’m planning on doing it again tomorrow and that will be two days from the last time.

The second part of the program is an isometric DVD which she changes up for you every 10 days for 90 days, so 9 different version – that alone is pretty amazing and worth every penny I think. You begin with arms then move to arms with weights then onto a million & 2 sit-ups and then begins the hipcentric portion and where the torture comes in. She does 40 repetitions of each movement and there are 6 separate movements on one leg and then moves to the other. Just imagine doing 240 fire hydrants, but turning them up a notch, because of course she does, and then moving to the other side. Burn baby, burn.

(Above is what I wrote yesterday…I wanted to write more now because I just sat down after completing the third day of it.)

I wanted to write maybe a little more detailed description of some of the modifications that I’ve made and the progress that I’ve seen even from the first time to the third.  Tracy will do things like jumping jacks, which I probably could do, but we must bear in mind that there is a LOT of me jiggling around and I really don’t want to hurt anything so I do really wide side steps and move my arms the same way; or she’ll be jumping and kicking her leg straight out it front and I’ll do a kick ball-change kind of move – things like that.

Each time I’ve done it I’ve tried to incorporate more and more of the jumping back into it and I do as I am able. Today I jumped quite a bit more than the first time, so I am slowly seeing that improvement. With respect to the hipcentric portion, I REALLY pushed myself to go from the 10 reps of each that I did the second time to as many as I possibly could. I pushed hard and I burned. I also yelled “Oh God” quite a bit. It burned like crazy. When I finish this exercise program my face is BEET red and sweat is pouring off of my body. Every muscle in my body has been worked and is quivering. And I know it’s working. Already I feel stronger – my muscles ache and I feel stronger. Things are moving and shifting. That – and I have so much energy when I’m done it’s amazing.

I might try it again tomorrow…